This project started with a desire of investigating the profound relations expressed between artist and public in Gustave Courbet’s painting, L’Atelier du peintre, allégorie réelle déterminant une phase de sept années de ma vie artistique (1855), in a concrete space. Reconsidering them through the artistic practices of the participants, the painting would serve as a starting point, and from it the artists would establish a close relationship with the locale.

The architecture of the place allowed me to de-center the exploration into ten individual projects, with ten artists/collectives— a continuous open studio in the format of an artist residency. In this way a dialogue could be entered into with one of the most controversial aspects of the painting— Courbet’s central positioning. The physical condition of the building, literally exploded, suggests a special relationship with the theatrical and performative, aspects of both of these are evident aspects in the painting. In the Steam Shop structure there is always a mixture between interior and exterior, revealing a potential encounter with the public and with the social and political aspects within the painting. Could the artists extend their practices to the local community, questioning the locale where their artistic production is being developed?
The history of gunpowder production, the colonial war and its effect on daily working life during the Salazar dictatorship are other important aspects that actually encounter a parallel in Courbet’s life, himself a silenced critic of the reactionary regime of Napolean
the third.

My project within the collective Steam Shop Project was an installation/performance using video and audio where I return five ex-workers to their workplace, a now ruined gunpowder factory, (Fábrica da Pólvora de Barcarena). I interviewed them in a constructed public theatre concerning their work and the social-political conditions in Portugal before the 1974 revolution.

When I came, though it belonged to the state, it was rented to the Dutch… The grenades were going to Germany, there was a military inspection from the Portuguese government … I was working in the Army’s inspection office, at the time they were also doing munitions to fight overseas. Later came the 25 of April—the war was ending…The factory even stopped operating by the time of the ‘72 explosion. They continued with those materials but ended the munitions production? The munitions production was in a section up there… It doesn’t exist today, we go up there and can’t see anything, it was the so-called sixth section. When did you realize that there was a production for war purposes? Right way when I started here in the factory. Was here a separated section? Only black gunpowder.

interview with Joaquim Pereira (Worked in the Steam Shop building itself (originally called the painted fountain)

I worked in all the shops, one week at the pressing machine, another at the granulator another at the grinder, it was like this… Do you know how many shops there were from here to there? Ten, ten shops! Here there were two kinds of compressing machines, with copper plates. Was this object a pressing machine? Yes, it was a pressing machine! It would compress until the desired density. On that side there was nothing… How was the big accident here inside the steam shop? The last started inside one of the shops, one that had two blending machines, one of them needed to be fixed, it had to be brought outside… They asked some workers to go get it, three on each side… The one that was on the outside corner slipped and caused a spark... The fire communicated with the other shops. Did the workers discuss the war among themselves? No, nor that was of any interest, the engineers, foreman and so on did not want these kind of discussions... I entered here millions of times…

When it happened, I was the one taking them to the outside [the bodies], me and another guy that already passed away—he was a fireman in Barcarena. There were nine explosions-- boom, boom! One per space? Yes. The working conditions were very bad… My uncle Sidónio, worked with metal chains that once in a while used to break from overloading, they provoke sparks and that was it… There was politics here… They came to take a guy out of here… We had a small communist newspaper…one day... two clients [political police] showed up here... the engineer called him, ‘Hey Serafim! Come over here to my office, there are two people who want to speak with you!’ I switched to his working post, stayed in his place… and by chance, I opened the drawers. Do you want to know what happened? I took all the communist newspaper propaganda and burned it! They took him right way to Caxias fortress [infamous prison for political prisoners]. Serafim? He was fired and was in jail for eight months I suppose…

How old were you when you started working in the Factory? Fifteen years old. The grenade section was made in the sixties… It was made in order to satisfy a requested by the Americans… and later the Germans, the Iraqis, I still remember the last shipment; it was to “Iraq-Quindama” around 1975. Here was section number two, known as the “Painted fountain” Was this shop very important? Yes it was, this one and all the others in this building. The first explosion during the time I was here happened in 1947 … The last one was, if I am not mistaken inside the second or third shop starting from the other extreme of the building. We thought that this was the way to make our lives right? We were building things, and I would look to a grenade, and think to myself: ‘after, when this is used, how many people am I going to kill? Yes, later one becomes more conscious about things… The women earned the same amount of money as men? No, not at the time, when women were admitted at the factory there was feminine worker and masculine workers—they discriminated… After the 25th of April the law was better in terms of working conditions, payment, the rights of the workers, …in time it became better. The Factory the way it is now? I think it is good this way.

I don’t know how it was. What I know is that the grenades were sold to the Germans and later they would show up in Angola… The solders, when they came home, the ones that actually survived… They used to say ‘Hey! Over there we saw something with a cover saying Barcarena gunpowder and munitions … [used against the Portuguese troops]. And of course, keep your mouth shut! No one could speak; we wouldn’t know what might happen… There was the political police at the time… Sure, some fear… Which year are we talking about? Nineteen fifty seven or eight or even before… We women were ashamed of certain things and of speaking about it.
So, at time I was earning ninety escudos per week [less than two euros]. I assisted on at least one [industrial accident], fourth of March, nineteen something… I am not sure, three died, Ilidio, Costa de S.Marcos and a boy from Alentejo, from Crato…Zacarias. The dog barked, barked and so they found a leg on top of the eucalyptus…